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A unusual grid today, and a puzzle consisting of a relatively small number of clues, often for fairly long entries.

The reason for this would appear to be the theme, that of the offspring of various celebrities. Beyond not recalling the nickname of 14/16, and a complete failure to parse the clue for 10, I found this relatively straightforward for a Punk, yet no less enjoyable.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010 at 8:09 am and is filed under Independent.
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Thanks Simon for the blog and thanks (I think) to Punk for a diverting, if somewhat esoteric (for me at least) puzzle, perhaps on a par with Anax’s “them apples” (who can forget?), and in stark contrast to yesterday’s easily accessible puzzle.

Not being a fan of 24s, I was afraid the four 24-related clues would have been beyond me, leaving many blank cells. However, parts of the answers, ZAPPA, BROOKLYN, JACKSON and SATCHEL, deduced from the wordplay and checked letters, plus a little Googling, got me there in the end.

I got MOON UNIT ZAPPA but had to look up BLANKET on wikipedia once I had JACKSON. The other two CELEBs defeated me. Teere were some very nice clues here but I’m afraid the theme made it an unsatisfactory puzzle for me.

Nope, I’m sorry, this one did nothing for me in spite of my undisguised admiration for John Halpern. I remember blogging a puzzle based on pretenders but at least they were all dead people and part of history and One Look does feature them when you put :pretender in the search.

Here we have names of rich kids with no claim to any fame. Somehow, the theme is ill-advised.

Well, today I enjoyed Times, Guardian and the FT; so 3 out of 4 isn’t a bad day at all, notwithstanding the cold temperature

Thanks Simon.
Pretty much agree with the above comments.
Don’t know anything about these “celebs”(except Zappa) and really can’t be bothered to find out.
If they really lumbered their children with those ridiculous names,then maybe child abuse charges are in order!

Glad to see I’m not the only one. ‘Good clues ruined’ is just about where I’m at. Maybe this is the Indy’s attempt to broaden the appeal of cryptics to a younger audience obsessed with clebs and reality telly, in which case I applaud it for its innovation, but can we have a more ‘conventional’ theme next, please?

On which note, I’m sure Eimi’s already booked his slot for 29 April next year for the Wills ‘n’ Kate show special. That’d just be in the best traditions of the Indy, wouldn’t it? Can you set the doors of Westminster Abbey to manual?

I was similarly glad, K’s D. These days, for me, ‘celeb[rity]’ almost inevitably means someone I’ve never heard of. The only issue I knew was 2dn, which made me smile [again] at the thought of the old joke that he was [comparatively] lucky not to have been conceived in Peckham.

Each to their own, but I’m not sure I really follow the grievances. For a start, Beckham, Zappa, Jackson and Allen are hardly obscure figures that only the kids would have heard of. And clueing was precise yet fun, as is characteristic of Punk. No complaints from me.

Well I thought that this puzzle made good commuter fare. The only tricky bits were the unfortunately named offspring and whilst I failed on Satchell Allen and Blanket I still found it enjoyable. Once you have got “celeb”, then it is not too much of a leap to suppose that the Beckhams might be in there somewhere,and that a “late” celeb might be the strange one himself. Also the Zappa child would not be unfamiliar to what I imagine is a large part of the solving population by age. I though the days of high court judges and “who are the Beatles?” was long gone.

None of the CELEBs were obscure to me and I certainly wasn’t being fuddy-duddy in my comments. My problem was that I didn’t know the names of any of the offspring other than MOON UNIT. I got JACKSON from the wordplay and then googled to find the name as, as far as I knew, his children were all called Michael—I had genuinely not come across BLANKET. The two that were left intersected to a high degree and despite Punk’s otherwise fair cluing I just could not get these. If I had managed to guess ALLEN or BECKHAM then maybe I would have got the first names but as the two surname eluded me so did the rest. Perhaps it is a measure of my lack of knowledge of other people’s children that I considered SATCHEL to be an odd name for Lily’s brother!

‘Fuddy-duddy’ is my middle name, despite the fact that Kathryn’s younger siblings have just discovered The Beatles on iTunes and I’m currently having wall-to-wall Lady Madonna and Yesterday pounding through from downstairs at while I’m trying to do some work upstairs.

The puzzle was fine, just not my cup of tea today. Glad that others enjoyed it, though. You don’t want vanilla every day, do you?

I didn’t start this until this evening and I’m afraid it was just too late to grapple with the bizarre names of celebrities’ kids, many of whom I’d never even heard of (Satchel Allen? Blanket Jackson? I thought they were all called Prince Michael something). For all I knew, 14 across could just as easily have been Sweater Jackson. I got most of the normal clues but even with half the letters checked, I still couldn’t work out some of those names. Things like beck for wave didn’t exactly help either.

Must admit twas a struggle and failed to complete this, Blanket Jackson?? I thought wacko jacko called all his kids Michael, doing this off line was not easy. Hmm Eimi warned yesterday of Nimrod and Bannsider to come, what’s due for S&B7 I wonder?

Seems reasonable enough to have this as a theme, but the dreadful checking (less than 50% in 15 out of 24 answers I think, including some of those dreaded 2 out of 5 ones) and my having never heard of Moon Unit Zappa, also being pretty vague about the others, meant that I never finished. And wasn’t particularly bothered about the fact, I’m afraid. The clues were pretty good as usual from Punk (although I didn’t like lit for books in 15dn).

An apPAULing grid – 6×7-letter words with only three checked letters, and 6×5-letter words with only two, and the ugly blackouts in the NE and SW corners. Sorry, but I care about such things, and it could have been done so much better.

It seemed to me a throw-away puzzle that should have been thrown away by the setter, rather than exploiting eimi’s good nature.

I did solve it, without having to look anything up, but the only satisfaction I got was filling in the last letter, so I could get on with something more worthwhile.

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